December 18, 2007

It's been a Jet Engine Day Around Here

Redneck Jet Engine

(Though, I don't think it's techincally a proper turbojet without having the compressor linked to a turbine. In this case it looks like compressed air and oil are injected into an automotive turbo. The turbo then feeds compressed air into a burner.)

Here's a micro turbojet for hobby use.

And this one makes me think of those "Wanna get away?" Southwest Airlines ads.

December 12, 2007

An Interesting Visual Effect

Don't worry. It's not one of those stupid "stare at this until a creepy picture and loud noise pop up to scare you" tricks.

I'm really curious what makes it work. I think it maybe be etching color info into the cones of the retina while somehow not affecting the rods. Then when they switch to a black and white image, your eye continues to over-compensate for a split second, filling in the colors of the image.

I'm reminded of this other optical illusion brought on by color fatigue in the cones of the retina. Stare at the black cross, and watch what happens to the purple dots over time.

1
The image you're staring at is the inverse of the hue and saturation with all the brightness removed, and yes, the point is to induce a color after-image. Then they remove that and replace it with the B/W image, which effectively gets modified by the color after image from before.